Toronto Developer Teases Apple as Future Tenant

November 4, 2013

An amazingly detailed rendering of a new Apple retail store on the corner of 100 Bloor Street West in Toronto (Canada) seems to raise hopes of a second downtown location for the city, but it’s only a developer’s wishful speculation. The rendering shows a store with 40-foot tall glass windows, two large, suspended Apple logos, and a typically bright interior with wall graphics and product display tables. Bloor Street has been the subject of Apple store speculation since 2009, but no active projects have emerged. Apple never publicly divulges its architectural plans until it’s ready to submit building permit applications to city officials. The rendering is one of several that appeared in a lease promotion (pdf) for the property, which consists of a 26-story condominium tower and three large, ground-floor retail spaces that have recently become available. The property is about one mile from the existing Eaton Centre store along a section of Bloor Street that has been rejuvenated. The corner space at Bloor and Bellair Streets shown in the rendering spans 5,665 square-feet on the ground floor, and potentially 9,741 square-feet on the upper level. In the Apple store rendering, the public retail space is two-levels tall at the front of the space, while the back-of-house presumably occupies both levels at the rear. It’s common for property developers to create speculative renderings that show potential tenants, long before the project is built, leased or constructed. In this case, the developer created separate renderings for Apple to occupy each of the three retail spaces—with varying fidelity to Apple’s architectural and design standards.

This rendering shows how Apple might occupy another space at 100 Bloor West, but it isn’t as convincing as the corner space version. Specifically, Apple would never use an outline of its logo (right) or accompany its with various colors.

This is the ground-floor plan for the corner space, showing a 65-foot storefront on Bloor St., and and 105 feet on the side street.

This rendering depicts the three retail spaces that now comprise 100 Bloor Street West. The Roots and The Body Shop stores have moved out, freeing up the corner space for another tenant—possibly Apple?

Besides an Apple store, the 100 Bloor West developer produced a rendering version that shows a generic tenant named…”Tenant.”